Welcome to the latest issue of the KHQ Super Alert. This week, ASIC issued guidance regarding virtual-only meetings and handed down a variety of individual bans, while APRA imposed additional licence conditions on an entity’s licence.
ASIC – Financial adviser permanently banned
On 17 July 2024, ASIC issued a media release announcing that a Queensland-based financial adviser has been permanently banned from providing any kind of financial services. ASIC found that the adviser ‘as the general manager of the financial services licensee asked an authorised representative of the licensee, who was not working at the time, to sign documents misleading clients into thinking that personal advice had been provided by the authorised representative when it had not been’.
Click here for details.
ATO – Transfer balance caps and defined benefit members in an SFT
On 16 July 2024, the ATO issued a media release announcing that the Income Tax Assessment Amendment (Superannuation) Regulations 2024 (Cth) have now been registered on the Federal Register of Legislation.
As reported in our Super Alert of 17 May 2024, the changes made by the regulations relate to the transfer balance cap for individuals with a capped defined benefit income stream who are part of a successor fund transfer. These changes will apply retrospectively from 1 July 2017 and the ATO has announced that it ‘will be working closely with impacted superannuation funds to adjust the transfer balance accounts of recipients of capped defined benefit income streams adversely affected’.
Click here for details.
APRA – Additional licence conditions imposed on RSE licensee
On 15 July 2024, APRA announced that it has imposed additional conditions on an RSE licensee, after there were issues identified with previously submitted data. The new licence conditions stipulate that the licensee must:
- ‘take reasonable steps to ensure that an expert completes a review of the accuracy and completeness of data submitted ahead of the 2024 performance test’;
- ‘develop and implement a remediation plan, to be approved by APRA, to address any recommendations or areas of concern identified by the expert’; and
- ‘provide APRA with an attestation regarding the accuracy of data and governance processes for data submissions.’
Click here for details.
ASIC – Virtual-only meetings guidance
On 12 July 2024, ASIC issued a media release providing guidance for companies and registered schemes relating to the continued use of virtual-only meetings. ASIC noted that while virtual-only meetings were introduced as a flexible measure during the pandemic, companies will only be able to ‘hold virtual-only meetings of members if expressly required or permitted by their constitutions’. ASIC recently reviewed a sample of public company meetings and found that ‘[a] small proportion of companies…[that] held virtual-only meetings…did not have constitutions that expressly required or permitted virtual-only meetings’.
Click here for details.
Want KHQ Super Alerts delivered straight to your inbox each week? Click here to subscribe.
